Free Republic

Well this is final live thread of the Space Shuttle Discovery. I'm going to miss seeing those birds..

[BIG snip] Santorum's ad and his Op-Ed, meant to mock Gingrich, in reality can only distinctly not help Santorum's struggling campaign. Gingrich will surely make the inevitable -- and correct -- connection between Santorum's ad and a serious attack on the Reagan space legacy -- and the dreams of America itself. "We'll continue our quest in space…. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue," said President Reagan that tragic January night. Well, no they won't. Not if Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney have anything to say about it. "I promise," says Santorum. Worse, whether Santorum's staff understands it...

The United States will have a permanent manned colony on the moon by 2020 if Newt Gingrich is in charge, the Republican presidential hopeful announced today (Jan. 25). Gingrich laid out this goal during a speech in the city of Cocoa, on Florida's Space Coast. He also said that near-Earth space would be bustling with commercial activity by 2020, and that America would possess a next-generation propulsion system by then, allowing the nation to get astronauts to Mars quickly and efficiently. "By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon, and it...

NASA: Instead of awarding our retired space fleet to museums, we should be awarding contracts to go to Mars and beyond. Once we triumphed over the vacuum of space. Now we face a vacuum of leadership. A nation whose world leadership was unquestioned once held its breath as an American spacecraft placed American astronauts on the surface of the moon. It was a triumph of exceptionalism that was officially laid to rest this week as a nation held its breath to see which museums our space shuttle fleet would be awarded to. In these difficult economic times and with a...

Well this is live launch thread of the Space Shuttle Discovery..

General Motors Corvette ad at YouTube here.GM's new ad for the Corvette makes a not-so-veiled swipe at the Obama administration, implying Chevy will keep building manned rockets even if — thanks to the President's budget cuts — NASA won't. It's brilliantly Amerigasmic. The new ad for the 2011 Chevy Corvette line-up is the product of their new firm Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and features the awesome Corvette ZR1 along with nostalgic video of NASA's Saturn V program from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. It also features a knock at the current space policy with this line: "While time has marched...

NASA has cleared the space shuttle Atlantis for its last planned launch on May 14, the first of three final spaceflights planned for the U.S. space agency's storied space plane fleet. Atlantis is officially set to blast off on May 14 at 2:20 p.m. EDT (1820 GMT) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a 12-day mission to the International Space Station. The shuttle's six-astronaut crew will deliver and install a new Russian science module called Rassvet, which means "Dawn" in Russian. "We're ready to go next Friday," NASA's shuttle program chief John Shannon told reporters Wednesday. "It's been...

Competitiveness: The president spent Tax Day reassuring Florida voters that money will keep flowing to NASA. But in space as well as on Earth, we'll be an unexceptional nation. In space, no one can hear you scheme. President Obama's speech at the Kennedy Space Center will never be confused with President Kennedy's clarion call in 1961 to send an American to the moon within a decade. Rather it was an admission that we will now boldly go where no one wants to go.

Under new plan, space capsules will head to ISS instead of moon. Stay with News 13 for the latest

The first man to walk on the moon blasted President Barack Obama’s decision to cancel NASA’s back-to-the-moon program on Tuesday, saying that the move is “devastating” to America’s space effort. Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong’s open letter was also signed by Apollo 17 commander Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon; and Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell, who is marking the 40th anniversary of his famous lunar non-landing this week.

Heroes of the Apollo 13 Moon mission have called on the public to help to save America’s manned spaceflight programme as President Obama prepares to defend his plans to scrap it. At an appearance marking the 40th anniversary of the lunar expedition that turned into one of history’s greatest rescue stories, the retired astronauts Jim Lovell and Fred Haise urged people to lobby Congress to block the President’s proposal and throw Constellation a lifeline.

TITUSVILLE, Fla. — They call it Space City, U.S.A. Drive along Highway 50 into Titusville, just across the Indian River from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, and you’ll ... Now, as NASA prepares to ground its shuttle fleet permanently — just four more launches are planned, including one early Monday — Titusville's 45,000 residents are left to wonder what's next. ...this year Obama revealed a 2011 budget with no money allocated for Constellation, effectively canceling Bush’s plan and instead recommending that the focus be on privatized spaceflight. Though Congress still has to OK the measure, Titusville faces the possibility of another...

President Obama vowed to defend his plan to mothball NASA's shuttle fleet as the debate over the spacecraft's future turned partisan. The White House said Obama would explain to the country why he believes NASA would get more bang for its space buck by scrapping the shuttle and turning rocket launches over to private contractors in an address slated for April 15th. The shuttle program is slated to end later this year. Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, of Texas, last week slammed Obama's agenda, claiming it would cause the U.S. to take a back seat to other countries in terms...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President Barack Obama will host a space conference next month in Florida to chart his vision for the future of human spaceflight, the White House said Sunday. The April 15 event comes after Obama last month proposed dropping the massively over-budget Constellation program launched by his predecessor, George W. Bush, to develop a rocket aimed at returning Americans to the moon by 2020. The White House said it wanted to ground Constellation because it was too costly, used outdated technology and would not be ready to ferry humans to the moon before 2028. In its place,...

Kesha Rogers called for the impeachment of President Barack Obama as the centerpiece of her campaign for Congress, and on Tuesday she won the nomination of her party. The Democratic Party. It was no stealth campaign. Rogers shouted it from a sound truck that cruised the four-county 22nd Congressional District. She posted an 18-foot banner emblazoned with the message “Save NASA. Impeach Obama” on street corners. Her Web site is filled with videos and periodic policy statements documenting her stand. During the campaign, Rogers denounced warnings of global warming as imperialist genocide, proclaimed that London banking interests are bent on...

Recently President Obama canceled Project Constellation that would return Americans to the Moon by 2020. Some maintain that Constellation was over budget, behind schedule and needed cancellation. What if we had approached another project the same way? Amalgamated Press. January 26th, 1944. General George C. Marshall today announced that the planned invasion of Europe has been canceled. There have long been rumors of cost overruns and other problems plaguing the planned invasion, which was designated 'Operation Overlord', which General Marshall referred to in his announcement and subsequent press conference.

Except in wartime, there has never been another government program that produced as much technological innovation as the U.S. space program, and there likely never will be. No other program has so successfully infused the economy, rallied the nation, inspired youngsters toward academic achievement or established the U.S. as the world leader in technology. In spite of this, on Feb. 1, President Barack Obama announced the cancellation of the Constellation program of exploration, leaving NASA, for the first time in history, without a specific mission. It is as if President Gerald Ford had canceled the space shuttle program in 1975,...

Outsourcing thousands of top technical jobs to Russia & China as well as destroying U.S. lead in space! Bye Bye US #1 in Space! The Obama Administration decision to cancel all further NASA development of new rocket technology including a replacement for the Space Shuttle and a rocket to the moon will also destroy the economy of the Florida Space Coast. In an era when Obama will spend a $trillion in taxpayer money to create a relative handful of jobs, he couldn't spare the few billions to save jobs in Florida and save America's reputation in space. 23,000 now expected...

WASHINGTON — NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said Tuesday that President Barack Obama has asked him to “find ways to reach out to dominantly Muslim countries” as the White House pushes the space agency to become a tool of international diplomacy. NASA chief Charlie Bolden

Corruption Chronicles blog is reporting that a few weeks after killing the U.S.A.’s world-famous moon-mission program, Barack Obama has ordered the space agency that operates it to focus on reaching out to Muslim countries. Indeed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) mission will shift from space exploration to Muslim diplomacy, as per the commander-in-chief’s orders. When Obama announced earlier this month that he would slash NASA’s $100 billion plan to return astronauts to the moon, he didn’t mention where some of the resources would be directed. Obama only said the moon program (Constellation) is behind schedule, over budget and...

Obama's Call to Endeavour Astronauts Gets Awkward Traci Watson Contributor (Feb. 18) -- Astronauts flying in space are used to VIP phone calls that don't always go as scripted, but Wednesday's conversation was probably one of the most awkward. President Barack Obama used his chat with the crews of the space shuttle Endeavour and the International Space Station to declare that he sees space exploration as "so important." "My commitment to NASA is unwavering," Obama said. He emphasized "how proud we are of you ... and how committed we are to continuing human space exploration in the future." A few...

WASHINGTON — NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said Tuesday that President Barack Obama has asked him to “find ways to reach out to dominantly Muslim countries” as the White House pushes the space agency to become a tool of international diplomacy. “In addition to the nations that most of you usually hear about when you think about the International Space Station, we now have expanded our efforts to reach out to non-traditional partners,” said Bolden, speaking to a lecture hall of young engineering students. Specifically, he talked about connecting with countries that do not have an established space program and helping...

Space entrepreneurs see President Barack Obama's proposal to cancel NASA's manned space flight program as the perfect opportunity to expand their Washington presence.

WASHINGTON -- One Central Florida congressman has accused President Barack Obama of breaking the law for trying to cancel contract bids for the next generation of spaceflight. According to published reports, the administration notified contractors Friday it is cancelling contracts for the Constellation and Ares programs, because the president’s latest budget cuts funding for those programs. But U.S. Rep. Bill Posey said the administration can’t do that. Posey, whose district includes parts of Brevard, Osceola, Polk and Indian River counties, said cancelling contract bids is in violation of a provision Congress put in the Appropriations Bill last year. According to...

Industry advocates are voicing concern with U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision to cancel NASA’s Moon-bound Constellation program and the threat it poses to America’s aerospace work force and U.S. strategic missile arsenals, but Defense Department officials said the two agencies are forging a plan to sustain the nation’s solid-rocket motor industrial base. Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) is among those railing against Obama’s proposal to scrap NASA’s plan to replace its space shuttle fleet with new rockets and spacecraft in favor of relying on commercial crew taxis to get astronauts to the international space station and back. “This is not money-saving....

...By the end of this year, there will be no shuttle, no U.S. manned space program, no way for us to get into space. We're not talking about Mars or the moon here. We're talking about low-Earth orbit, which the U.S. has dominated for nearly half a century and from which it is now retiring with nary a whimper. Our absence from low-Earth orbit was meant to last a few years, the interval between the retirement of the fatally fragile space shuttle and its replacement with the Constellation program (Ares booster, Orion capsule, Altair lunar lander) to take astronauts more...

NASA's Constellation programme, which was going to fly manned capsules to the International Space Station in (maybe) 2015, to the moon in (maybe) 2020, and to Mars someday, is dead. Some people are mourning it. I'm not.

Opposition to President Obama's bid to cancel the Constellation return to the Moon program has started to manifest itself among purveyors of popular culture. It has even inspired its first work of literature.

"You can't be a great country without doing great things and a great thing would be to return to the Moon and build a laboratory there and open it up to the world," Hickam said on Tuesday's MetroNews Talkline. Hickam says he's angry about the cut. "It's really a foolish decision to take away the goal of going back to the Moon. I can certainly see figuring out a better way of doing it, but simply to take away the goal, I think, is so shortsighted and so foolish that it's almost breathtaking in its stupidity."

During World War II in the Pacific, many native tribes were astounded by their first contact with an advanced technological civilization, when the Americans would come in, clear a strip in the jungle, set up a control tower and loud giant silver birds would appear from the sky bearing canned food, trinkets, fuel and other supplies. After the war, the Americans went away for the most part, but the memories remained. Many of the natives, changed forever by the experience, decided to replicate it. They cleared their own strips, built control towers of thatch and palm, and waited for the...

...In his first public comments since the release of President Barack Obama's proposed NASA budget last week, Mike Coats said the space center will have to find new missions besides the International Space Station to replace the waning space shuttle program and the seemingly doomed Constellation program... Of the 17,000 civil servants and contractors who are funded through Johnson Space Center's programs, 7,000 work under the shuttle and Constellation programs. ...Obama's proposed wholesale cancellation of Constellation — NASA's next-generation exploration program that entailed development of rockets to carry humans to orbit, the moon and beyond as well as a versatile...

While discussing his spending priorities, President Obama used an image we can all understand: the shrinking family budget. We have less money to spend, he explained, at home and on Capitol Hill. So good on him for ditching the manned (shouldn’t that be “personned’’?) space program. It is the unneeded and extravagant lawn service of the federal government. I grew up with the fairy tale of the space program: brave men with crewcuts, such as the tragically (and pointlessly) martyred Gus Grissom, launching themselves into space, um . . . because it was there? Because the Russians had done so...

NASA administrator Charles Bolden met with the media in advanced of the flight of the space shuttle Endeavour STS 130, now planned for Monday morning. Bolden offered some astonishing admissions about the Obama space plan.

Let's do away with pasteurized milk and stop using polio vaccines, stuff like that...

The president released his FY 2011 budget Monday, and his policy for NASA's human spaceflight program sets the nation on a course to second-class status in space. Instead of setting our national sights on the moon, nearby asteroids, or more distant destinations, President Obama is declaring that human spaceflight is unimportant to U.S. national interests. He's not saying so directly. But his budget actions speak loudly. He has cancelled NASA's next-generation Constellation Program, including the Orion spacecraft and both rockets planned to return American explorers to deep space, to the moon and beyond

President Barack Obama's proposal to cut the $81bn funding for Nasa's Constellation manned spaceflight programme spells the end of America's attempt to return people to the moon by 2020. If Congress approves the budget, it almost certainly means the next people to land on the moon will be Chinese. Some people are saying this is a serious strategic error.

Want the ultimate space collectible? Consider a space shuttle. The orbiters have flown 29 years and have a few miles on them (tens of millions), but soon all three will be up for grabs. Some time this year—right now it looks like September 30—NASA plans to shut down the program. For all the shuttle’s successes in missions like deploying satellites, fixing the Hubble Space Telescope, and building the International Space Station, flying it was always risky. Two orbiters were lost, Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003, killing 14 astronauts. Now NASA says it will donate the ones remaining— Atlantis,...

No bucks – no buck Rogers – Our sources tell us NASA is no longer headed back to the moon – or anywhere else for that matter.

Achievement: The nation that put the first man on the moon may have put its last as budget cuts slash NASA's plans to return. Men will return to the moon, but they will likely speak Chinese. On May 25, 1961, President Kennedy announced in front of a joint session of Congress the dramatic and ambitious goal of sending an American to the moon by the end of that decade. It was a clarion call to the American spirit and technology to rise up and prove that America's best days were still ahead. Forty-one years after Neil Armstrong set foot on...

NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon are dead. So are the rockets being designed to take them there — that is, if President Barack Obama gets his way. When the White House releases his budget proposal Monday, there will be no money for the Constellation program that was supposed to return humans to the moon by 2020. The troubled and expensive Ares I rocket that was to replace the space shuttle to ferry humans to space will be gone, along with money for its bigger brother, the Ares V cargo rocket that was to launch the fuel and...

12:17 a.m. EST, January 27, 2010 E-mail Print Share Text Size NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon are dead. So are the rockets being designed to take them there — that is, if President Barack Obama gets his way. When the White House releases his budget proposal Monday, there will be no money for the Constellation program that was supposed to return humans to the moon by 2020. The troubled and expensive Ares I rocket that was to replace the space shuttle to ferry humans to space will be gone, along with money for its bigger brother, the...

The White House has decided to begin funding private companies to carry NASA astronauts into space, but the proposal faces major political and budget hurdles, according to people familiar with the matter. The controversial proposal, expected to be included in the Obama administration's next budget, would open a new chapter in the U.S. space program. The goal is to set up a multiyear, multi-billion-dollar initiative allowing private firms, including some start-ups, to compete to build and operate spacecraft capable of ferrying U.S. astronauts into orbit—and eventually deeper into the solar system. Congress is likely to challenge the concept's safety and...

A White House panel of independent space experts says NASA's return-to-the-moon plan just won't fly....However, President Barack Obama's expert panel said any plan to go beyond low-Earth orbit was "not viable" with current spending....

Video of Obama honoring Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin on the 40th anniversary of man's first steps on the moon and how he remembered watching the splash down from Hawaii, but as one the the commentators stated how could that be when Barry Soetoro lived in Indonesia as a child from 1967 to 1971 and was enrolled in Muslim classes when Apollo 11 splashed down in in the Pacific on July 24, 1969?

During the month of June, NASA is joining other organizations throughout the United States to observe Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month. LGBT Pride Month commemorates the events of June 1969, when patrons at the Stonewall Inn in New York City resisted police harassment that was all too common for members of the LGBT community during that era. Celebrating LGBT Pride each June commemorates this act of rejecting discrimination and standing up for the American values of fairness and equality. This month-long observance gives all of us an opportunity to appreciate the accomplishments of LGBT Americans and celebrate...

“Obama's NASA selection is a boost for manned spaceflight” proclaimed the headline to the May 24 Los Angeles Times story. Apparently, “the choice of astronaut Charles Bolden as NASA administrator reassures many who feared that Obama was lukewarm on future manned missions,” and is being interpreted as supporting NASA’s goal of humans once again going to the moon by 2020.“Clearly Charlie Bolden would not have taken the job if he were being asked to shut down human spaceflight," said John Logsdon, a space policy expert in Washington, according to the Times. If approved by the Senate to take the captain’s...

President Obama's selection Saturday of former astronaut Charles F. Bolden Jr. to head NASA gives a boost to the agency's manned space program and its stated goal of returning humans to the moon by 2020. During the presidential campaign, Obama had seemed lukewarm toward NASA and its hugely expensive human spaceflight program. Space enthusiasts were particularly worried after Obama staffers floated the idea of taking money from the agency to fund domestic programs.

WASHINGTON/CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – President Barack Obama will name former space shuttle commander Charles Bolden to lead NASA, the White House said on Saturday, in the midst of a major shift in the U.S. human space program. Bolden, 62, a retired Marine general, flew on four shuttle missions before leaving the U.S. space agency in 1994 to return to the military. Bolden, who would become the 12th administrator in NASA's 51-year history and its first black head, is seen as a strong advocate for human space flight. "I think it's good news and good for the agency," said Frank...

President Obama yesterday nominated a former Marine aviator and space shuttle astronaut to become the new head of NASA and oversee a broad review of the agency's ambitions for manned and robotic space exploration. Retired Maj. Gen. Charles F. Bolden Jr. would become the first African American to run the space agency if approved by the Senate. In addition to his long résumé of military and NASA experience, Bolden served more recently as chief executive of a defense and aerospace consulting firm. He briefly worked as an aerospace lobbyist, until the fall of 2005. Bolden would take over NASA at...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama will name former astronaut Charles Bolden as NASA administrator as early as Saturday, according to congressional sources. If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, the retired Marine Corps general will be the first African-American to head the agency. The timing, the sources said, is keyed to the landing of space shuttle Atlantis, which remained in orbit Friday because of bad weather but will return Saturday or Sunday. The president also will announce that his campaign space adviser, Lori Garver, will be Bolden's deputy, the sources said. Several members of Congress were called Friday and briefed by...